Patriots: Tom Brady explains Julian Edelman dustup

The Patriots opened the second half of their 37-31 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday with the ball and a seven-point lead. It looked as if they were going to expand their advantage as they quickly picked up three first downs while advancing to the Buffalo 31-yard line. But the drive abruptly ended when Tom Brady was sacked on third down.

The Patriots opened the second half of their 37-31 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday with the ball and a seven-point lead.

It looked as if they were going to expand their advantage as they quickly picked up three first downs while advancing to the Buffalo 31-yard line. But the drive abruptly ended when Tom Brady was sacked on third down.

The GQ/QB was then caught on camera by CBS screaming at receiver Julian Edelman. Brady wasn’t asked about the incident during a postgame news conference that he ended after five questions, but he addressed it yesterday while making his weekly paid appearance on WEEI.

“Julian and I, we’re locker mates, and we have a great relationship,” Brady said. “We talked about certain things. It’s just one of those miscommunications. He thought I was doing one thing, I thought he was doing the other. It ended up costing us a first down in a critical game, at a critical point in the game.

“We’ve got to be on the same page. It was just some frustration boiling over. Those guys are working hard, trying to get open, trying to do the right thing. That’s just part of what our frustration on the day was a little bit about.”

Brady noted the miscommunication had to do with route running and not a blocking assignment.

Thomas, McDonald ready to play

Backup offensive linemen Donald Thomas and Nick McDonald were pushed to the forefront Sunday due to injuries.

Thomas came in late in the first half to replace Dan Connolly at right guard. Connolly departed with a banged-up back and didn’t return.

“You’ve got to come to the stadium ready to play,” Thomas said. “You never know if you’ll play or not play. You got to be ready to go and another situation happened today where I had to step in and fill the void for somebody.”

Thomas has appeared in all nine games this season, making four starts. He was also thrust into action on short notice against the Jets in Week 7 when Connolly departed early due to illness.

The fifth-year pro believes it’s more difficult to be dropped into the fray than to get the starting nod.

“You need to catch up to the speed of the game when you’ve been standing there, and then you got to go from zero to 100 in a split second,” Thomas said. “You’ve just got to be ready to go. Luckily, it was right before the half, so I got two plays in the half and then got a chance to settle in and think about what I was going to do for the second half.”

McDonald entered in the third quarter, stepping in at left guard after Logan Mankins limped off with an ankle injury, his day over.

“You have to prepare each week as if something like that is going to happen,” said McDonald, who made Green Bay as an undrafted rookie out of Grand Valley State in Michigan in 2010 and joined the Patriots the following season.

“It’s unfortunate that someone goes down, you never want to see that, we’re good friends and good teammates. But when they go down and your number is called, you have to play just like they would, just like a starter would.”

Defensive squanders

Other than their game-ending stand — aided greatly by mistake-prone quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick — there were two noticeable instances when the Patriots’ defense had an opportunity to alter the direction of the game.

The first came when the Bills, already facing a 10-0 deficit, found themselves looking at first-and-20 from their own 10 late in the first quarter. The other occurred early in the third when the Bills started a drive from their own 6.

The Patriots essentially failed in both situations. The Bills got a field goal in the first instance and made it to the New England 1 in the other before being submarined by Fred Jackson’s fumble.

“You just look at it as bad defense,” safety Devin McCourty said of the inability to pin the Bills deep in their own end. “We just have to play better and take advantage of those situations. We work on those.

“(Then) there were times we did take advantage and we got turnovers (three), they had to punt a couple times. If we just played more consistent and get those things to happen, we’ll be in good shape.”

Extra Points

The Patriots have now won 17 consecutive games in the second half of the season, their last loss dating to the regular-season finale in 2009. … The Patriots finished with 347 yards, meaning their league-record streak of 17 straight games with 350-plus came to an end. … Linebacker Jeff Tarpinian was released yesterday and Bill Belichick confirmed the Patriots received a roster exemption for cornerback Aqib Talib. … The NFL Network will replay Patriots-Bills at 9:30 tonight.

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